Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (; May 2, 1950 – April 12, 2009) was an American feminist academic scholar in the fields of gender studies, queer theory, and critical theory. Sedgwick published several books considered groundbreaking in the field of queer theory, and her critical writings helped create the field of queer studies, in which she was one of the most influential figures. Sedgwick's essays became the framework for critics of poststructuralism, multiculturalism, and gay studies.

In her 1985 book Between Men, she analyzed male homosocial desire and English literature. In 1991, she published "Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl", an article that received attention as part of an American culture war and criticism for associating the works of Jane Austen with sex. She coined the terms homosocial and antihomophobic.

Sedgwick argued that an understanding of virtually any aspect of modern Western culture would be incomplete if it failed to incorporate a critical analysis of modern homo/heterosexual definition. Drawing on feminist scholarship and the work of Michel Foucault, Sedgwick analyzed homoerotic subplots in the work of writers like Charles Dickens and Henry James. Her works reflected an interest in a range of issues, including queer performativity, experimental critical writing, the works of Marcel Proust, non-Lacanian psychoanalysis, artists' books, Buddhism and pedagogy, the affective theories of Silvan Tomkins and Melanie Klein, and material culture, especially textiles and texture.

Biography

Eve Kosofsky was raised in a Jewish family in Dayton, Ohio, and in Bethesda, Maryland.